Rodeo refinery; Credit: Philipps 66

27^th Jul 2022, The Evolution of Rodeo Renewed

The San Francisco Refinery consists of two facilities linked by our pipelines. The Santa Maria facility is located in Arroyo Grande, California, 200 miles south of San Francisco, California, while the Rodeo facility is located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Intermediate refined products from the Santa Maria facility are shipped by pipeline to the Rodeo facility for upgrading into finished petroleum products. Refinery facilities include crude distillation, naphtha reforming, hydrocracking, hydrodesulfurization and delayed coking units, as well as a calciner. The refinery currently produces a high percentage of transportation fuels, including CARB-grade gasoline. Other products produced include fuel-grade petroleum coke. The majority of the refined petroleum products are distributed to customers in California by pipeline and barge. Additionally, refined petroleum products are exported to customers primarily in Latin America by waterborne cargo.

27^th Sep 2024, Santa Maria Refinery

The Santa Maria Refinery ceased operations in January of 2023, concluding nearly 68 years of safe, reliable and environmentally responsible operations on the Nipomo Mesa in California. First announced in 2020, the shutdown of the facility is related to the planned conversion of our San Francisco Refinery in Rodeo to one of the world’s largest renewable fuels facilities.

15^th April 2024, Rodeo milestone marks high point in four-year journey

Phillips 66’s San Francisco Refinery, which for years manufactured products like gasoline and jet fuel, is now producing only renewable fuels. Long known as the company’s Rodeo Refinery, and recently renamed the Phillips 66 Rodeo Renewable Energy Complex, the facility is producing 27,000 barrels a day of renewable diesel. The on-time startup capped a four-year project known as Rodeo Renewed that will make the refinery one of the world’s largest renewable fuels facilities. The new Rodeo is on track to increase production rates to more than 800 million gallons per year (50,000 BPD) of renewable fuels by the end of the second quarter. The facility can also produce renewable jet, a key component of sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, with production expected to begin this quarter. Instead of fossil fuels, the plant produces fuels from mostly renewable feedstocks such as used cooking oil, fats, greases and vegetable oil.

26^th Jun 2024, Phillips 66 completes Rodeo renewables conversion

Phillips 66's Rodeo, California, refinery has completed a multi-year, billion-dollar conversion to process only renewable feedstocks, increasing throughput rates to 50,000 b/d. The 128-year-old Rodeo plant stopped processing crude in February, taking up to 115,000 b/d of oil refining capacity offline as it transitioned to producing renewable diesel (RD) and, eventually, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The plant initially bought and refined pre-treated feedstocks while building its own 40,000 b/d pre-treatment unit (PTU), whose two 20,000 b/d trains will prepare raw feeds such as used cooking oil, fats, greases and vegetable oil for Rodeo's three renewable diesel units (RDUs) before the end of this month. "The pre-treatment area will run at max rates as soon as it's commissioned," and refine harder-to-process feedstocks later in the year, Rodeo refinery manager Jolie Rhinehart told Argus on site at the plant earlier this month. "Our units will be able to process the lowest carbon intensity (CI) feedstocks, something that's called brown grease." There is also a financial incentive to process lower CI feeds. "That's how you really make money in these assets," Phillips 66 chief executive Mark Lashier told investors at the JP Morgan Energy Power & Renewables conference earlier this month.